This paper theorizes critical readings from an interactional/argumentative perspective, providing a semiotic and phenomenological analysis of the scale ranging from consonant, "friendly" criticism, to dissonant, confrontational or "unfriendly" criticism. A number of key critical theories (by theorists such as G. W. F. Hegel, Oscar Wilde, Jacques Lacan, Erving Goffman, Norman Holland, Jacques Derrida, Stanley Fish, Paul Ricoeur, Judith Fetterley, John Muller, Alan Sinfield, and H. Porter Abbott) are examined in the light of this conception of criticism, and are situated within the framework of interactional pragmatics, of the dialectics of communication, and of a semiotic theory of truth and of consciousness.